it. david: the real reason milton friedman didn't like it is because he said it was so easy for government to keep raising the value added tax. we've seen it happened in spain, italy and greece and wherever it's tried. adam: i lived in spain a long time ago. i guess you realize you don't paying it at the time but things are more expensive. david: thank you, gang. thank you very much. thanks to the company. thanks to you for watching. now here are dagen and dennis. hi, gang. dagen: merry christmas. love to your family. david: thank you. same to yours. dagen: i'm dagen mcdowell everybody. dennis: i'm dennis neal -- kneale. dagen: is it the fiscal cliff fears that have shoppers down this season? retailers are reporting slowing sales over the last couple of weeks. dennis: a woman fired for being

too attractive and a supreme court says it is legal. dagen: i will bite my tongue because it is the top of the hour and stocks now and every 15 minutes. nicole petallides at the new york stock exchange. hey nicole. nicole: i look forward to hearing more about that particular story as i watch the stock market here, i do see the dow is down about 1/3 of 1%. majority of the dow components are lower. it is december 24th. there are kids running around here. it's a very random day on wall street. the traders will get together and sing the traditional song which represents hope back in the early 1900s. some names are weighing heavily here on the major averages. a couple names squeezing out gains like alcoa and home depot. let's take a look at the retailer jc penney.

you do see it doing particularly well here. oppenheimer has talked about the fact that there's traffic. there's people going into the stores. they are doing a lot of promotions over at jc penney, and that's actually helping them out. a lot of kids here today, obviously, on a day where we're waiting for the big holiday. all right. there you go, merry christmas everybody. dagen: thank you, nicole. dennis: president obama and house speaker boehner have not spoken since friday with time running out to avoid going over the fiscal cliff. dagen: with the president and congress on a christmas break, will they miss their year end deadline? peter barnes? peter: just got a note from one of the speaker's spokes people he said the speaker and the president have not spoken since that phone call on friday. all eyes are now on the senate when it returns on thursday to try to get a deal to avoid the

fiscal cliff. this past friday before the president left for his family vacation in hawaii, he proposed a limited measure to avoid all of the cliff when speaker boehner scuttled his plan b, the president wants to extend the bush tax cuts now for the middle class and try to avoid some of these deep spending cuts on january 1st. a white house spokesperson says today that staff discussions continue between the administration and the hill. in july you may recall the senate democrats passed an extension of the middle class tax cuts if r a year at a -- for a year at a cost of 157 billion. that bill also patched the alternative minimum tax for 2012 for 92 billion, but it went nowhere after that. senate republican leader mcconnell is critical to hammering out a deal because he can filibuster any legislation, but his spokesperson says this morning quote, nothing new to report. we don't know yet what senator reid plans to bring to the senate for a vote. >> when i listen to the president, i think the president is eager to go over the cliff

for political purposes. i think he sees a political victory at the bottom of the cliff. he gets all additional tax revenue for new programs. he gets to cut the military which democrats have been calling for for years, and he gets to blame republicans for it. >> what we ought to do is take speaker boehner's last offer, the president's last offer, split the difference, that would be a package of about 2.6 trillion dollars. you couple that with the 1.1 trillion that's already been done, that would be close to the 4 trillion dollars that's needed to stabilize the debt and begin to bring it down. peter: the president and the speaker say they will cut their vacation short to return to washington later this week to try to get back to work to hammer something out. dennis and dagen? dagen: peter, aren't they nervous about this? do you get that sense from them at all down in washington that, like, the time is here now and you're -- i know it is christmas, but come on, people.

peter: once again, we go right up to the brink with all these gamesmanship waiting for somebody to blink first. nobody has blinked yet. dagen: are they going to fix the alternative minimum tax? peter: i've got that on my list of stories for wednesday. i mean that would hit 30 million people for 2012 if they don't fix it, and they always do, so i would expect that would be in some kind of package in the senate. dennis: all right, thank you very much peter barnes. peter: thanks guys. dagen: thank you very much. we want to bring in steve moore to ask him quickly if there's enough time to get a deal done. he's senior economics writer at the "wall street journal," author of "who is the fairest of them all" and steve now that i introduced you, we're going to have to go to the new york stock exchange to hear wait till the sun shines which the traders sing every time this time of year. i'm going to pose the question

to you. apologies if i need to interrupt you. is there enough time to get a deal done? >> yeah, there is. peter is exactly right that the modus operandi and capitol hill and the white house for the last 30 years is every time they are up against the deadline, they are like the high schoolkid who has to finish thesis paper. they wait till the last minute. so dagen, i'm making a prediction that on december 31st, you and i will probably be talking and i think they will be furiously negotiating and i think they probably wiil reach a deal. let me make one other point if i may, let's say it doesn't happen on december 31st, it's going to happen in january. it is not the end of the world. all this idea that we have to put economic crash helmets on because it is going to be armageddon, they are crazy. everyone knows this is going to get resolved. the middle class is not going to pay higher taxes. if we go into january, dagen, one of the things they will do is make whatever bill they pass retroactive to january 1st. i think there's way too much panic talk here. dagen: what went wrong with the

plan b and house speaker boehner and if you have republicans who won't sign off on an increase above an income threshold of a million dollars, where do you think that that line falls for the whole of america? >> well, look, i think the deal that's going to emerge is probably some kind of income cut-off of about $500,000. and you're not -- you know, some republicans will vote for that. dagen: steve i apologize. let me interrupt you. i will come back to you. let's listen. wait till the sun shines. ♪ [clapping and cheering] dagen: annual christmas eve tradition at the new york stock exchange, a song written at the turn of the last century and

they're still singing it downtown at the corner of wall and broad. steve, we both -- i don't know the lyrics and the world should be thankful for that that i can't even possibly sing that song. but steve, to finish your thought about what you were saying about that income threshold. >> that's a great tradition, by the way. look, what i was saying is i think, you know, they will end up somewhere around 500,000, you know, maybe not exactly that number. and it is going to probably take democratic votes to get that through the house because we've already seen when speaker boehner tried to pass a bill with only republican votes, dagen, he didn't have the votes to do it. so nancy pelosi is going to have to provide a lot of votes to get this done. but, you know, here's the thing i think is really interesting about this whole debate. i heard one of your previous news segments saying oh this is going to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. it's not going to come anywhere near reducing the deficit by a trillion dollars. if you do this tax increase on the rich, you maybe raise 40 billion dollars a year. that's not nothing, but 40

billion dollars over a year over ten years that's 400 billion. we're running a trillion dollars deficit. this is not a solution and not serious. that's why it always comes back to dealing with the spending side of the aisle because that's where the deficits come from. dagen: last thing, steve, what about the fate of house speaker john boehner because there's a lot more at play than just raising taxes on people who make more than a million dollars with what we saw happen last week? >> yeah, you know, i have always been a fan of john boehner's. i've known him for 20 years. i think he's a strong conservative. he's got a bit of a conservative revolt on his hands dagen. any time you have a high-profile issue like this and you are about to bring to it the floor and you have a revolt among your own members of your own party, that's a bad thing if you want to retain your speakership. so i think there may very well be a rebellion come january when they vote on officially on who the speaker will be. you know, eric cantor is next in line. but i'm going to predict that i think that john boehner is going

to hold on despite the fact there is a mini rebellion within the republican party. dagen: great to see you steve. merry christmas. >> merry christmas. dagen: be well, safe travels. i know you are in chicago. >> i have to come back early because of the fiscal cliff. dagen: steve, thanks. >> take care, dagen. dennis: our next guest is predicting a santa rally with markets in the green the last week of the year and into early january. the chief investment strategist of raymond james is joining us now. there's a track record on your side about the last week of december. >> that's right, usually the last week and the week before is when the last of the retail selling takes place and there tends to be upside vacuum between christmas and first couple days of the year.

70% probability of being an up shortened week. dennis: you don't see that percentage going down because of the cliff and all that? >> i think your previous guest was right. i lived inside the d.c. beltway. i think they will come together. they won't get a grand solution, but i think they could get the first step of maybe 500,000 as your other guest suggested in terms of the definition of what wealthy is. i think he's also right on boehner. boehner has been under tremendous personal pressure to cut a deal, and when the new congress sits on january 4th, i'm coming to you from virginia right now, and cantor is indeed the next up and he has a lean and hungry look. dennis: a lean and hungry look. if markets don't rally against expectations for the last week of december and into early january, does that mean that the markets are going to be in trouble, or would you basically say well, then buy in because eventually it is going to rally the way it usually does in the last week of december? >> well, the old stock market saw is if santa fails to call, the bears will roam on broad and

wall. that also has a pretty high statistical probability. i'm not so sure it plays that way this time because of all the cross currents, because of the fiscal cliff, and i do think that the legislators will get together in the last hour or the first part february -- excuse me, first part of january and try and come to some kind of an agreement. that's the way washington works. dennis: thanks for being with us today. we appreciate it. >> you bet. dagen: what went wrong with the romney campaign? you will not believe what his son has to say about his father's reluctance to even run for president in the first place. dennis: plus, a dentist fires an assistant for being too attractive. the iowa supreme court rules it legal. will this spread? dagen: on this final shopping day before christmas, it's been

a rough one this holiday season, stores don't seem that busy.

dagen: merry christmas and it is all about stocks now and every 15 minutes even on christmas eve. nicole, stocks still in the red. nicole: that's right. we're seeing the dow right now at 13,142. that's a loss of about 1/3 of 1%. much like the s&p 500 and the tech heavy nasdaq composite, all three are pulling back a little bit, when you speak of the broader markets, though, when

you look at the dow, we have been up four of the last five trading weeks. the trend has been to the upside. but still concerns now from washington about washington, about the fiscal cliff, traders of course don't think anything is getting settled today. they are even talking about the fact that it might get pushed back to the middle of january or something. a lot of speculation and guessing going on, but in the meantime, a little bit of pullback here. let's take a look at facebook. facebook on the other hand a different story. getting a buy rating over at needham and companies, up 2 1/2%. the price target is $33, up from $25. getting close to the $38 ipo price. they obviously have high hopes for the mobile realm for facebook and that's why they raised their targets and has a buy rating. back to you. dagen: thank you, nicole. dennis: where are the shoppers? after a strong start, forecast called for robust holiday season. dagen: but shoppers are not living up to those expectations. adam shapiro is here to explain what the heck is going on.

adam: where they go. dagen: it's empty. adam: you should be done with your shopping by now. the national retail federation has not changed their prediction, they still think it will be up over last year, 4.1%, a 586 billion dollars season. remember they recalculated their formula. but shopper track has come out with what they are saying is not so stellar shopping season for holiday shoppers. they are saying for the week ended december 15th, that we're down 4.3%, compared where we were last year. and now their overall prediction for the holiday shopping season is only going to be a growth of 2.5%, versus 3.3%. now, take a look at who is doing well. there's still going to be growth in the holiday shopping. brick and mortar up 20%, but on-line retailers their stocks in this year 2012, up 55%. they are doing well and yes,

even the on-line retailers according to shopper trak, up 8.4% this year. most people in this world would say great, i'm up 8.4%. but most people were expecting something like 15 to 17 percent for on-line sales. so look merry christmas, up is up. it is a lotot better than being negative. dennis: and it's up amid all the cliff phobia going all over the place. thank you very much, adam shapiro. dagen: thank you very much adam. one thing working in retailers' favor on this christmas eve, gas prices are at near their lowest levels for the year. tom kloza, the best in the business on gas prices joins us next with his outlook. dennis: and too hot to work alongside her, we're going to tell you why the iowa supreme court ruled it was legal for a dentist to fire this woman for being too attractive. dagen: let's look at some world

currencies, shall we, how they are holding up against the dollar?

dagen: gas prices bottomed out

nor the year at least -- for the year at least about $3.21 a gallon rough days ago but have been going higher since then. here with more is tom kloza, chief oil analyst joining us on the phone. can we hold steady here for the next several months maybe? >> yeah, i think so. i think we start the year with a little bit of a wobble higher, particularly in some parts of the country, but i think that generally we should see lower peaks and maybe a little bit deeper valleys in 2013. got a lot of cheap crude in this country and a lot of it will be coming to market in 2013. dagen: talk about the different regions in the country particularly the west coast which was hit with those ridiculously high prices earlier this year and then the northeast, particularly around the new york city area, we have not seen the price relief other places in the nation have. >> no, we haven't. there was a little bit of almost

an embolism that occurred when the pipeline shut down and we didn't get the normal flow of products from the gulf coast after sandy, a little bit from isaac too, so our prices here in the northeast are actually 10 or 15 cents above the lows for the year. and i suspect that may continue for a little while. on the west coast, we had a nice down trend, but today of all days, when a lot of people aren't even showing up, kind of like the giants yesterday, we're seeing prices actually move higher in california in a couple refinery issues. so that's going to be the hot market again in 2013. you've got an adversarial relationship between refiners and regulators and that doesn't add up to anything good. dagen: there's something very strange going on in terms of the wholesale market for gasoline and export of gasoline. can you explain that? >> yeah, one of the reasons the east coast has higher prices is -- and there's plenty of gulf coast product is the pipeline and it actually costs 15, 20, 25

cents a gallon to ship it from the gulf coast up to new york. you can actually ship it overseas to west africa or europe for probably a fraction of that. so even though the northeast is a little bit tight on gasoline, it costs so much to ship in u.s. vessels right now that some of the gasoline that might ordinarily come to the other parts of the country is going to places like nigeria, asia, europe, you name it, and that's unusual and it has to do with a shortage of american flag vessels. dagen: i'm surprised politicians aren't talking about that. but instead they are trying to deal with the tax increases and spending cuts. if they don't get a deal done on that, will we see any impact in the crude and also the gasoline markets? >> oh, absolutely. if the fiscal cliff, if we go off of it, i think we will see crude oil prices come down substantially. my thought is though if we don't

do that, if we have a short-term fix, that you will see a lot of hot money come back into the market and park itself in commodities and oil is always a favorite. so if you're rooting for the fiscal cliff, you might be rooting for lower gas prices, but you're probably rooting for lower unemployment, you know, lower income and a lot of other things as well. dagen: tom, if you're rooting for the giants, i know it was a rough day, but if it makes you feel any better, if you're a jets fan, they're a whole lot worse. >> they do. it is time to adopt a team. i think i'm going to go with the packers this year. dagen: i have always stayed sort of loyal to the redskins. they are having a good year so i don't have to be ashamed. i can just pull out my redskins sweatshirt instead of wearing my jets sweatshirt. >> as long as the cowboys lose, all is right with the world. dagen: amen brother. thank you tom. >> take care, merry christmas. >> thanks a lot tom. dennis: can you be fired for

being too attractive? in one particular instance the iowa supreme court says yes, the implications ahead. dagen: plus mitt romney didn't want to run for president, that's what his son is claiming. doug schoen joins us to break it all down. but first here are some of today's winners on the s&p 500:

dagen: we have a guest had that says the only way to fix the fiscal cliff is to limit politicians to a single term. mitt romney did not really want to run for president.

his son said that during and interview. did a dentist act legally when he fired his assistant for being too fine? dennis: we have stocks now. down with 41 on the dow. nicole: did the woman have two nights of teeth? on -- i can show you goldman sachs. it is down about .5%. another dow component that i will show you includes mcdonald's. it is right over here. it is down a full percentage point. we are seeing some down arrows.

the vix, the fear index, has been to the downside. people continue to worry about the fiscal cliff. back to you. dennis: thank you. dagen: mitt romney did not want to run for president. at least, that is what his son is saying. he said he had no desire to run for office. it was his wife along with his sons to push him. dennis: let's bring in doug shoen. >> i don't think it could be farther from the truth. the physical and emotional stress of the process. they do not go through that if they do not want to be president. dagen: maybe what was wrong, what people sensed about mitt romney when he was on the campaign trail, that there was a

lack of passion there. >> there was no unwillingness to take whatever position he thought would suit his purposes in the campaign and, you never heard rodney say this is what i really need, you know, needs to be done for america. i do not think there is anyone in america who wanted to be elected more than mitt romney, other than, president obama. dennis: he was too much of a nice guy. he should have been beating the daylights out of the bad record of the president. he never really got been enough. >> i do not think he focused enough on what the president did wrong and what he would do differently. there was a lack of passion.

dagen: in terms of who gets bruised now, do you think politicians get the looming tax increases and spending cuts before the end of the year and who gets paid out more? >> increasingly, i think we will go over the so-called fiscal cliff. short-term will hurt the republicans, undeniably. long-term, it will hurt the democrats and president obama. dennis: i thought all along that the republicans would look horrible. now, i'm wondering if it is switching the other way. a family earning only $20,000 a year will see that their tax refund gets cut in half if we go off the cliff. >> i think you are right. especially since we have not had

the follow-through, dennis. what is the reason for all of this? where are we heading? the president, nor the republicans have answered that question. dennis: thank you for being with us. dagen: chicago mayor is renewing a plan to privatize the cities i second biggest airport. jeff: this was the world's busiest airport from 1948 to 1961. now it is just three big airlines that call this home. southwest, frontier and delta. it is still a huge cash generator for the city.

he famously had a deal to privatize the city's parking meters and the problem is, they took all the money they had and spent it already. mayor manuel is under some scrutiny. as i said, both are choosing to do so. the problem is, if you get that money up front and then you spend it, not such a hot deal. they had a $2.5 billion deal before. the problem is the financial downturn of 2008, 2009 hits. it is a possibility that this could all be done privately. it generates a lot of income for

cities. the argument is private industry can do it better than public government can do it. dagen: jeff, thank you very much. happy holidays. merry christmas. jeff: thank you, dagen. dennis: "the hobbit" is becoming a trend in hollywood. it took in $36.7 million. the action thriller starring tom cruise debuts in second place "this is 40" is coming in at

third. that is followed by "rise of the guardians." dagen: i have no interest. dennis: okay. dagen: i will send all of my family to go see it. this woman was fired for being too attractive. this was in iowa. we will take that case apart. dennis: what will this mean for the fashion model business? first, take a look at the markets. ♪

>> i am lori rothman with your fox business brief. it is a sea of red. the driving force to turnover, one else, the fiscal cliff, now

just seven days away. goldman sachs reinstating general motors with a vibrating and a $35 price target. goldman says gm will benefit from a fresh product cycle. santa claus is coming to town tonight. you will not be able to find him on google maps. norad has decided to switch for the first time. that is the latest from the fox business network. giving you the power to prosper. ♪

dagen: short trading session. let's take a look at how these markets are holding up. people are gone for the christmas holiday.

the markets close at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. close all day long tomorrow. it is almost quarter till the hour. nicole: i am watching a market that is pulling back a bit. the vix, the fear index, is to the upside. there is no real catalyst to say this market will soar today. instead, it just pulls back a little bit here. here is a look at the dow jones industrials. down about 40 points right now. i also want to take a look at herbalife. they had this whole reason as to why they were shorting the company. herbalife is swearing to take them straight on. they are buying back one and

$50 million of shares. that is one of the reasons why they are trying to show they believe in the company. dennis: fired for being too attractive. a dentist in iowa fires his dental assistant because her beauty frightened her -- his marriage. i think the most important thing here is that i try to get through this without saying an inappropriate joke or hitting on you in any way. what do you think about this? >> well, here is the problem, what the court or the woman did is she said it was only because of her gender. she should have filed an additional complaint that this had to do with sexual harassment. this guy made the creepiest comments to her. he was a married man.

the relationship more over the course of ten years. she did not seem to think that what he said was wrong. he just fired her because she was female. dennis: summit the fact that she had worked for him for ten years have been enough? >> in the first year, you find him attractive and in over ten years, that changes. dennis: like every marriage. >> or every relationship. unless you are a contracted employee, which, she was not, she was an at will employee. you can fire anyone for pretty much any reason. you cannot fire somebody because they are a woman. you cannot fire somebody because they are black or hispanic or

something. dennis: if he is heterosexual, he would not have felt this about any man. why wasn't the plaintiff's argument that this was in some way gender-based. why did that not hold water? >> you bring up a great point. imagine if that was a homosexual man that worked for him. now, all of a sudden he has gay feelings for him. it would have been because of the relationship between the two. the attraction to each other changed. he did not fire her because he was a woman. he fired her because of their relationship. dennis: shouldn't he have to resist temptation? >> i think that is a personal problem. clearly, he tried to resist.

he brought in a pastor. he met with her husband. he clearly tried to resist. her hotness was so overbearing that he could not. dennis: boys, okay. thank you for being with us. nice to see you. happy holidays. not a great start for microsoft. sales of the new operating system continue to struggle. dagen: shibani joshi is following this story for us. shibani: dagen and -- who else is out there with you -- dennis. steve is praying that there is a lot of windows eight devices getting delivered by sent out tonight. as i reported before, there is an initial indication that windows eight sales are not onto

a great start. it just launched about a month and a half ago. windows eight sales are down 13% from early october to early december, pairing it to what windows sales were about a year ago. now we are getting more industry data points. his company has not seen any huge spark in sales because of the release of windows eight. this he is telling the "new york times." it has the potential to bring down the entire pc industry. think about every single party tied to windows eight. best buy is the biggest pc retailer out there. fingers crossed for santa tonight and deliveries of the windows eight devices tonight.

dagen: shibani, thank you so much. happy holidays to you and your family. dennis: fiscal cliff worries got you down? maybe you should listen to our next guest. john brown is next. dagen: some of today's winners on this shortened trading session. they spoke. almost $27 a share. ♪

dennis: the blame for the fiscal cliff gridlock falls squarely on the side of both politicians

from the democratic and republican side. john, what do you think? >> i think we can fix it. i do not think we will for a long time. both parties are to blame. i think president obama has been prepared to go over the cliff for a long time. he started the negotiations putting a lot of red lines down and demanding more. it is created by both the democrats and republicans. i think we will maybe get a small deal, but the really big can will be kicked down the road to further impoverished american citizens, working people, to finance big and ever intrusive government. the only answer, in my opinion, is to have strict term minutes

for u.s. politicians. it used to be that politics was a vocation. now it has turned into a career. they are most interested in getting reelected so they continue their career. they forget the nation. it is very apparent in our country. in america, it has gone on for a long time and impoverishing americans. it is a great shame. dennis: it doesn't ring a whole new meaning. >> you are absolutely right. of course, the two-party, plus their cotton socks, focused on

tax increases. it is a side issue, really. they will do something for the nation above themselves. just take for example our health system. politicians, for themselves have a completely deluxe system for themselves. a different one. politics should be a vocation, not a huge money earning job. dennis: give us your outlook for the next few weeks. dennis: when households are looking at a higher tax increase than even the rich will face, maybe this in the turning

against the democrats. >> well, it could. frankly, i think they are both to blame. they will impoverished further. working americans who are earning and paying tax, in order to finance and ever intrusive, evermore arrogant and larger government. it is cutting government, that is the key thing. dennis: i could not believe the democratic proposal called for even more. thank you for being with us. happy holidays. >> you to. dagen: "countdown to the closing bell" is next. dennis: mr. ashley webster will join you with that. merry christmas, everybody.

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